How long have you gone without a fridge? I can tell you exactly how long I have: since 1 March, and counting. (I write these words 17 days later.) After the electrician, with humiliating ease, had restored my electricity, I replaced the fuse in the plug, plugged in the fridge, heard the whirring noise of the fridge motor start up, said “Yay!” to no one in particular – and then the lights went out again. So it seems as though the fridge is at fault, and will have to be replaced. Good: it was always pretty ropey, and either froze everything or nothing. In the winter this is not much of a problem, for the kitchen becomes, quite literally, a walk-in fridge. If the weather warms up, then it comes back into service – but its services are now over.
Why have I not replaced it? After all, I’m pretty sure it falls within the remit of the landlord, so I don’t have to worry about the cost. The explanation is a combination of being away, having to tidy up, reluctance to be a bother, and undiagnosed ADHD. It’s very fashionable to claim this, but anyone who has read more than three of my columns will go: “Yup. He’s got it, all right. It’s the only conceivable explanation.”
Anyway, I have other things to worry about. Top of the unpops, in with a bullet, is news from M—, my oldest, dearest and most loyal and beloved friend, who is sitting in a bed waiting for a double bypass operation after a heart attack. He says he feels fine but the docs say uh-uh. I texted him: “That lifestyle of yours was always going to catch up with you.” I should point out that, although he is three years older than me, he drinks in moderation (I have not seen him plastered since 1982, in the Balliol College bar), he has never smoked, eats his greens and takes regular exercise. By way of comparison… well, let me just say that breakfast this morning for me was bread, fried in bacon fat, with a fried egg on top. This is not untypical. As for how much I drink, I had to reveal that at the dentist’s last week: 35 units a week, at a very conservative estimate. I saw the look on the nurse’s face and thought of saying: “Does it make it any better if I say it’s been like this for 45 years?” I decided not to.
“I bet you’re feeling pretty smug,” replied M— citing the example of Galahad Threepwood, younger brother of Lord Emsworth, the pig-besotted earl of PG Wodehouse’s Blandings Castle. M— is a keen and learned Wodehousian, but for those who aren’t, Galahad is a kind and decent man in his fifties, who, despite living on pretty much nothing but whisky and soda and cocktails, with the occasional pint in the Emsworth Arms, maintains a dapper and healthy demeanour, in defiance of all medical precedent and advice. M— has been comparing me to him for some years now. And I think of my friend R—, whom I saw over the weekend; she’s four years younger than me and has had a stroke and a double hip replacement, and she’s no pisshead either, has a healthy diet and goes to the gym, etc, etc.
I feel like Withnail (from Withnail and I) looking at Marwood as he spoons what he thinks is soup out of a bowl, and, just as he asks, “Where’s my soup? Why didn’t I get any soup?”, I ask, “Where’s my stroke? Where’s my heart attack? Why haven’t I… etc?” But Withnail doesn’t really want the soup, he just wants the attention – and I don’t want the stroke or the heart attack.
But how, if it doesn’t tempt fate to say this, have I avoided such a fate? “You’ve been tempting this fate since the late Seventies,” says a friend when I mention this. She has a point. I don’t look quite as young as I have implied – if not too bad for nearly 63, and with my lifestyle. Apart from the cheekbones and the twinkle in my eye, I look little like the drawing of me at the top of this page, however much people say, “You’re looking well.” I think this is mainly astonishment that I am not in the grave.
And I have, I am afraid, been drinking more lately. First, because I can. Second, because, well, just look around. The world is falling apart and, as if things weren’t bad enough, there is a non-zero chance Nigel Farage will be our prime minister in just under three years’ time. And unless it’s all a pose – I actually suspect it is – his lifestyle isn’t the healthiest either. Although his generally repugnant character radiates from his features with the force of a malign sun, he’s not looking too bad on a technical and non-aesthetic level – for he is fantastically ugly – for someone his age. (It has always boggled me that I’m actually older than him.)
Maybe, then, there is a part of me that wants the heart attack, some self-destructive urge that makes me want to go out the way my electricity did. But then I remember this morning: as I ate my healthy breakfast, and saw a seagull gliding above the houses in front of me, the early sun catching the underside of its wings in a way that took my breath away with its beauty. That is, it only took my breath away figuratively. I wouldn’t like to drop dead because a seagull took my fancy. I mean, I might live in Brighton, but there are limits.
[Further reading: Donald Trump’s oil crisis will come for you too]
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This article appears in the 25 Mar 2026 issue of the New Statesman, Easter Special
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